Saturday, April 23, 2005

Sunni Arabs Parties Accept Democracy?

According to Chrenkoff, two major Sunni political parties apparently have decided to accept democracy and participate in the next Iraqi elections. Strategypage assesses the current situation:

Attacks on civilians are still attempts to discourage people from cooperating with the government, or to encourage support for the terrorists. But once you do a lot of this, you are tagged a loser. Such terror only works if you can do it on a large enough scale to control the entire population. But the terrorists are almost entirely Sunni Arabs, and more and more of their terror is being directed against other Sunni Arabs. This isn't working, with Islamic terrorist becoming more and more unpopular among Sunni Arabs. This has not changed the attitudes of Sunni Arabs, who are not happy with being out of power, and reduced to the status of a minority (about 20 percent of the population.) But the Sunni Arabs have concluded that terrorism won't get them back in power quickly. So the plan now is to take the long way around, cooperate, and stage a coup down the road, when conditions are right. That's worked in the past.

Meanwhile, the Sunni Arabs are leaving it to the government to deal with the terrorists. Aside from individual Sunni Arabs joining the police, the Sunni Arab leadership is not sticking its neck out to oppose the terrorists. All this passes for progress in Iraq.